A Heart in BBGS~ Carolin Teh-Hehir (Class of 1978)

This is not a rambling about my success as a BBGS student. In fact, secondary-school life was a roller-coaster ride of sentiments: gratitude for my teachers peppered with resentment at their myopic vision of what constituted an exemplary student; pride in my limited accomplishments – mainly in art and literature – laced with the deepest remorse at all the squandered opportunities.

I could have done better, but I had all but peaked at fourteen. At 14, I was mentally depleted. An interplay of circumstances outside my control, which included my chronically poor health (today they call it lactose- and gluten-intolerance), and upheaval on the home front, had shifted my focus from the mundane classroom to the escapist milieu of teen pop culture.

Consequently, textbooks were relegated under a heap of 16, Tiger Beat and Seventeen magazines, but so was my mastery of English riding on the crest of the rag trade. While I was hardly academically inclined, my fear of winding up on skid row effectively ousted a lifestyle choice that would be potentially without direction. I booked a passage to Australia and majored in literature at university.

Four years later, I returned to KL and promptly assumed teaching responsibilities at Taylor’s College, PJ. My floundering at adolescence would lead me to over-compensate in adulthood. I became ambitious and laboured in earnest to establish myself in the workplace. In the ensuing years I was Academic Director of ELS Language Centers and Principal of the Keris College School of Languages in Ipoh. During the course I had revisited BBGS as a Sunday School teacher with JIC, had published my short stories and books, and had even dabbled in journalistic writing.

Today I am a citizen of New Zealand, my surrogate country. I teach English to international students at a local college and, whenever I can, I support my husband’s outreach ministry, which aims to bring the light of Jesus Christ to the world. You’re welcome to visit his site: http://www.thewhyman.jesusanswers.com.

There is a heart in BBGS - mine. This, despite some of my worst trials being wrought in the school. Indeed, life did not always deal me a fair hand but it is because of the BBGS culture that I am what I am, high-achieving and single-minded but also empathetic and forgiving. And I pick up the litter I come across, straighten the wall hangings, and live a circumspect life – these are but some inconsequential residues of BBGS’ ample legacy that lives on in me.

Defining Moments

Here’s a summary of the moments in BBGS that defined my character and outlook ~

Form 1

It was the dawn of a new era. I had progressed to BBGS from her kid sister school down the hill. I ran with a circle of girls who, one day, descended upon the class monitor like a flock of vultures to destroy her. There had been resentment at the absence of a democratic process in electing our class representative, and she bore the brunt of our resentment. Miss Cooke was hastily summoned to defuse the situation and as I listened to her acerbic tirade, I decided unequivocally that I would never again be part of a clique, that I would not succumb to herd mentality without justification, and that I would set, rather than follow, trends.

Terry Jacks’ Seasons in the Sun was a huge hit that year.

Form 2

The tables were now turned and I understood the alienating effects of being “Teacher’s Pet’. The form teacher had ignored the process of election when she slapped the monitor tag on my uniform. The one to hate and pick on, I was in a lonely place. Carrying out my duties without the class’ support was akin to navigating an explosive minefield; my classmates were veritable emotional land mines, daring me to detonate them with every wrong word and action. I refused to surrender to their bullying tactics, resolving to win over my adversaries by seeking a common ground. As the year drew to a close, I found that common ground – a collective devotion to Donny Osmond.

Form 3

My relationship with my two best girl pals, whom I’d known since Form One, was deepening and they made school meaningful. Marilyn, with her gentle dotage, was a balm for the topsy-turvy condition of my home. Unbeknownst to her, she challenged me to up my ante at the academic stakes, mainly in English. Jennifer, whom I loved, greeted me every day with a kiss on my cheek. Jen had heard a myth that more weight was equated with extra height. We put the myth to the test, and packed on the pounds with rojak, chee cheong fun and ice cream every day. Well, our exercise succeeded at debunking the myth and we were saddled with the excess weight while the promised height gain continued to elude us. We visited Joanne Drew to rid us of the excess but, shamefully, at last we chose laxatives and slimming pills to do the job.

Meanwhile, I was developing a keen awareness of my nascent talent at writing and aesthetics during English classes. I had won the first and third prizes in a national poetry writing contest. My teachers expressed their concern that I was daydreaming too much but little did they realise that during those moments when they had caught me with my eyes glazed over, I was making mental constructs of sweeping fictional landscapes and characters that were the basis of the short stories and novella I would later publish.

Forms 4 and 5

It was a frustrating time. The dreaded MCE was looming over the horizon. I was placed in the Arts stream, and since Form Two, I had suffered from cognitive dissonance, the acutely painful recognition that I was never going to be able to get my head around geometry, or distinguish atoms from molecules, or dissect frogs at ease. Nor did I see their relevance to my life.

The Careers Club room was my personal sanctum, where I spent my senior years reading about prospective careers. In the meantime, I was gaining a reputation among the staff as an artist. I was commissioned to design the programme cover for the school’s production of Aladdin, and posters for fund raisers and staff fun fairs. My ad poster for the Careers Club so impressed the treasurer that she made me her successor. And so I toyed with the idea of carving a career in the Arts while I half-heartedly swotted for my exams.

About this time, I was also being stalked by two girls from another class. They would giggle to each other whenever we locked eyes. It stroked my ego to have admirers but I learned to prolong the sport of the chase by being coy and playing hard to get.

MCE came and went and, somewhat predictably, I had obtained A’s in all three of my English papers. It was also the end of my scholastic sojourn along the hallowed corridors of BBGS.